Rescuers comb wreckage of Greece’s deadliest train crash
TEMPE, Greece — Rescuers searched late into the night Wednesday for survivors amid the burned-out wreckage of two trains that collided in northern Greece, killing at least 43 people and crumpling carriages into twisted steel knots in the country’s deadliest rail crash.
The impact just before midnight Tuesday threw some passengers into ceilings and out the windows.
“My head hit the roof of the carriage with the jolt,” Stefanos Gogakos, who was in a rear car, told state broadcaster ERT. He said windows shattered, showering riders with glass.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called the collision of the passenger train and a freight train “a horrific rail accident without precedent in our country,” and pledged a full, independent investigation.
He said it appears the crash was “mainly due to a tragic human error” but did not elaborate.
The train from Athens to Thessaloniki was carrying 350 passengers, many of them students returning from raucous Carnival celebrations. Although the track is double, the trains were traveling in opposite directions on the same line near the Vale of Tempe, a river valley about 235 miles north of Athens.
Authorities arrested the stationmaster at the train’s last stop, in the city of Larissa. They did not release the man’s name or the reason for the arrest, but the stationmaster is responsible for rail traffic on that stretch of the tracks. He was due to appear before a prosecutor Thursday to be formally charged.
After last month’s fiery freight train crash in Ohio, the state’s two senators, a Democrat and a Republican, are proposing new federal safety regulations for railroad companies.
Transportation Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned, saying he felt it was his duty to step down “as a basic indication of respect for the memory of the people who died so unfairly.”
Karamanlis said he had made “every effort” to improve a railway system that had been “in a state that doesn’t befit the 21st century.”
But, he added, “When something this tragic happens it’s impossible to continue as if nothing has happened.”
The union representing train workers announced a 24-hour strike for Thursday, while protests by left-wing groups broke out in Athens late Wednesday. Athens metro workers also called a 24-hour strike for Thursday, saying they face similar problems as railway employees.
The crew of a train that derailed in Ohio received a warning about an overheated axle only just before the cars went off the tracks, the NTSB says.
Emergency workers used cranes and other heavy machinery to move large pieces of the trains, revealing more bodies and dismembered remains. The operation was to continue overnight, with firefighters proceeding painstakingly through the wreckage.
“It’s unlikely there will be survivors, but hope dies last,” rescuer Nikos Zygouris said.
Larissa’s chief coroner, Roubini Leondari, said so far 43 bodies had been brought to her for examination, and would require DNA identification as they were largely disfigured.
“Most [of the bodies] are young people,” she told ERT. “They are in very bad condition.”
A 2008 train crash in Chatsworth killed 25 people and broke a long congressional stalemate on a nationwide rail safety project known as “positive train control.” Twelve years later, that system is finally in place.
Greece’s firefighting service said 57 people remained hospitalized late Wednesday, including six in intensive care. More than 15 others were discharged after receiving initial treatment.
More than 200 people who were unharmed in the crash or suffered minor injuries were taken by bus to Thessaloniki, 80 miles north. Police took their names as they arrived in an effort to track anyone who may be missing.
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Hellenic Train, which operates all of Greece’s passenger and cargo trains, including those that collided, offered its “heartfelt condolences” to the victims’ families. The company belongs to Italy’s state railways.
Eight rail employees were among those killed in the crash, including the two drivers of the freight train and the two drivers of the passenger train, according to Greek Railroad Workers Union President Yannis Nitsas.
The union called the one-day strike to protest what it said was chronic neglect of Greece’s railways by successive governments.
“Unfortunately, our long-standing demands for staff hirings, better training and above all use of modern safety technology always end up in the wastepaper basket,” it said in a statement.
A teenage survivor who did not give his name to reporters said that just before the crash he felt a powerful braking and saw sparks — and then there was a sudden stop.
“Our carriage didn’t derail, but the ones in front did and were smashed,” he said, visibly shaken. He used a bag to break the window of his car, the fourth, and escape.
Among the bitter lessons that Ukrainians have had to learn in the nearly nine months since Russia invaded is that what’s here today can be destroyed tomorrow and that nothing in war can be taken for granted.
Gogakos said the crash felt like an explosion, and some smoke entered the carriage. He said some passengers escaped through windows but that after a few minutes, crew members were able to open the doors and let people out.
Multiple cars derailed and at least one burst into flames.
“Temperatures reached 1,300 degrees Celsius [2,372 Fahrenheit], which makes it even more difficult to identify the people who were in it,” fire service spokesperson Vassilis Varthakoyiannis said.
A man who was trying to find his daughter, who was on the train, described a harrowing phone conversation with her before she was cut off.
“She told me ‘we’re on fire. ... My hair is burning,’” he told ERT, without giving his name.
Many of the passengers were students returning to Thessaloniki from Carnival, but officials said but no detailed passenger list was available. This year was the first time the festival, which precedes Lent, was celebrated in full since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
The government declared three days of national mourning from Wednesday, while flags flew at half-staff outside all European Commission buildings in Brussels.
Visiting the accident scene, Prime Minister Mitsotakis said the government must help the injured recover and identify the dead.
“I can guarantee one thing: We will find out the causes of this tragedy and we will do all that’s in our power so that something like this never happens again,” Mitsotakis said.
It was the country’s deadliest rail crash on record. In 1968, 34 people died in a crash in the Peloponnese region in the south.
Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou broke off an official visit to Moldova to visit the scene, laying flowers beside the wreckage.
Pope Francis offered his condolences to the families of the dead in a message sent to the president of the Greek bishops conference on his behalf by the Vatican’s secretary of state.
The devastating quakes killed at least 50,000 people with many more injured, tens of thousands still missing and hundreds of thousands homeless.
Condolences poured in from all over the world, including neighboring Turkey, Greece’s historic regional rival. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his sorrow and his wishes for a speedy recovery for those injured, a statement from his office said.
Despite the frosty relations between the two NATO nations, Greece’s leadership had called Erdogan last month following a massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands in Turkey last month.
In Athens, several hundred members of left-wing groups marched late Wednesday to protest the train deaths. Minor clashes broke out as some protesters threw stones at the offices of Greece’s rail operator and riot police, and set dumpsters on fire. No arrests or injuries were reported.
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